From Vienna With Love: the sweetest pictures of Rainbow Parade 2018

Vienna will host the EuroPride in 2019 | Photo: @katiekace Instagram

Cheerful marchers and flamboyant floats paraded through the streets of Vienna last Saturday (16 June) for the annual Vienna Rainbow Parade.

The city celebrated the LGBTI community ahead of next year’s EuroPride 2019. The crowd partied in the streets, culminating in Rathausplatz, just outside the City Hall.

Austria’s very own Conchita was the headliner of this year’s pride. The artist sang her major hits such as Rise Like A Phoenix and Firestorm. On stage with the former Eurovision winner, San Francisco’s musical duo The Weather Girls.

Same-sex marriage will be legal from January 2019

Austrian Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) chairman Christian Kern was among the speakers who took the stage.

‘We celebrate love, we celebrate life, we celebrate that in our country everyone can be happy in their own way,’ he said.

He also told the crowd he was delighted that Austria will join other European countries in legalizing same-sex marriage from 2019.

Rainbow Parade organizers are ready for EuroPride

The organizers were happy about a record attendance of 200,000 participants.

‘We made it, we had a more diverse and longer Vienna Pride than ever and are ready for 2019,’ Katharina Kacerovsky, CEO of Stonewall GmbH, told Austrian news agency Austrian Presse Agentur (APA). The purpose of the event was ‘to reduce fear and prejudice towards the whole LGBTI community’.

Vienna has been selected to host EuroPride next year. EuroPride, which takes place every year in a European city, will be held in Sweden this summer. Stockholm and Gothenburg will have two parades, respectively on 4 and 18 August.